“Ruined”

I was thirty-five before I could tell anyone about the molestation I experienced at the age of ten. The incident, which I described here earlier, involved a stranger who threatened to kill my parents if I told anyone, just seven months before my father died. I kept this incident locked inside me for two and a half decades until I started going to therapy. My therapist suggested I tell my mother about it; she simply shook her head and asked me if I wanted chicken or pork chops for dinner.

This was not much different from the time she learned that my grandfather had been sexual with me. Occasionally, when I was younger, my grandfather would put his hand in my pants and fondle me. It was not a particularly traumatic experience for me; nor was it particularly pleasant. Mother was unhappy when I told her, but that was the last I heard of it- until later. Then, a year afterwards, she learned that my grandfather had also been fondling my youngest brother. The shit hit the fan with that revelation and my little brother has yet to recover from that, even though he insists he has. It was not that I wanted a big deal to be made about my incident, nor that I thought one should be made. I didn’t feel particularly angry with my grandfather for what he did. I understand the circumstances of emotional issues which led him to do such things. But, I never understood why it seemed so much worse to my family when it happened to my brother than it did to me.

The answer came to me after my grandfather’s death when my mother revealed to me that my grandparents had once asked her to let me live with them. Life at home was pretty chaotic and dysfunctional and my grandparents recognized I was pretty sensitive and would probably be happier with them. Mother, of course, refused, explaining to me that she felt my grandfather would have “ruined” me. I didn’t ask what she meant by that, but I knew. She felt he would have made me gay.

In fact, I realize now that she already felt he had “ruined” me. From the time I was eleven, I was teased and mocked at school and at home for being gay, even when I didn’t know what that meant. Mother believed that the reason I was gay was because of my grandfather. Of course, sexual orientation is far too complicated and fundamental an issue to be determined by simple occasional fondling. But, in her mind, because I was gay, I was “ruined.”

She would not say that to me today. I am fifty years-old, but looking back over these decades, I find that her reaction to the sexual abuse, indeed everyone’s reactions to both mine and my brother’s, hurt me far more than the actual abuse. I don’t write this to excuse what happened, merely to pout it into perspective and to suggest that parents and family members who discover this is happening should be very careful not to make the revelation and aftermath more traumatic for the child that the actual abuse.

Confirming My Atheism

It was just a year after my loss of faith that the first of two terrible incidents occurred that confirmed my atheism. It was the morning after Bobby Kennedy was shot. I was taking swimming lessons from the Red Cross at the local college. Just before noon that Wednesday, I was leaving the natatorium, walking to my bicycle in my swimming suit, tee-shirt, and blue canvas sneakers. A man approached me and asked if I were in the swimming program. When I answered that I was, he insisted I accompany him to his office to fill out extra forms. As this was 1968, boys had not become wary of strange adults making such demands. I did as I was told. When the man had satisfied his desires, he warned me not to tell anyone about what had just happened or he would kill my parents. I was terrified and believed him. Seven months later, my father died in the crash of a Piper Apache in an ice storm on the plains of the American Midwest. He was the foundation of my life, the only force of stability and encouragement I knew and though I intellectually knew I was not responsible for his death, emotionally, I was convinced the man thought I had told what happened and he had killed my father in retribution.  I never said anything about what happened until I was thirty-five.

There were adults who tried to tell me that God had a plan for Daddy and had taken him for a reason. I could think of no possible reason God would end the life of a good and decent man; nor, could I think why he would permit a ten year-old boy to be terrorized in such a vicious way. I still don’t. I still cannot accept that a loving and omnipotent God would allow the horrors and suffering that afflict our world. How barbarous and cruel that he should look at life as a test. How selfish and arrogant that he would demand worship or cast those who failed or refused into the fires of Hell for eternity. It made no sense. It was just not possible.

If I had any second thoughts about my atheism before, the events of June 1968 and of January 1969 ended them, and though there have been times in adolescence and adulthood when I wavered in my conviction, when desperation and hopelessness led me to the extreme of trying to believe, I have been reconfirmed in my certitude that there is no God and I now find more peace and serenity than I have known since my childhood. There are still challenges in my life, still pain and uncertainty; but, I am facing those challenges with more strength than ever and making the best of what time I have left.